Measure Nonce Cut Once

I’ve been turning for three years and I figured that it was time I learned how to do other things. But—I’m more of an artist rather than a mathematician and found that I could measure three times and still get it wrong.

Since my husband put up French cleats in our new-ish workshop, I thought that here was an opportunity to try something where it wasn’t essential to get it looking perfect. I looked around for clamp storage ideas and there was a whole lot of measuring required; I watched Stevinmarin’s Clamp storage racks video about five times.

Since we had 2×4s around I cut five pieces that looked long enough, with four thin slices as spacers. I stuck them all together with a clamp and traced the outline onto plywood and cut it out. I cut a piece of the cleat as wide as the plywood. Then I glued everything together in stages. A couple of the blocks shifted a bit, but it still works. I was afraid that if I clamped between scrap 2×4s, the glue might squeeze out and stick to the scrap blocks. A couple of days later, I thought that if I used wax paper it would be easier to separate if there was squeeze out. I’ll try it next time. The last step was to screw everything together and sand a bit.

For the other clamps, I knew I could drill a hole at an angle, but wasn’t sure I could repeat the same angle so I just drilled at 90 degrees and had my husband slice off a bit on the table saw. I could have done it myself with a plane but he very kindly did it for me. I added a spacer block at the bottom to keep it sticking out from the wall.

They aren’t pretty but I’m happy with them and they work. I don’t think they’d win Stumpy’s tubafore contest but I’m good with that. I’m not sure if the concept will work with the pipe clamps so they’ll stay hanging on some metal shelves. Thanks for looking.

Ben – yikes! I thought it looked better than nonece. I stand very much corrected. It reminds of a store here in Canada called Roots; they provided the clothing for our athletes at the Australian Olympics. Apparently it means something quite rude there.

Thanks again. I must admit I was a bit embarrassed to post it because of all the amazing work that everyone does; such intricacy and accuracy that I aspire to. And here I am posting some chewed up 2×4s . . .